Huntedly
by TheHollowWorld
Summary: A mad politician, a dying medical student and an aimless lawyer seek a therapist out, only to have their lives completely changed. But is it the direction all things should take? Or something has gone terribly wrong? Modern AU. Swearing, Nudity. Please, read for your own sake. Photo credit: HyeeeNa tumblr
1. Chapter 1

_**Happy birthday Idle! This is for you, as I promised!**_

 _ **With love, THW**_

 **Disclaimer** : Certain parts of the plot were based on the tv show Therapy and always loved manga Naruto. I do not own the people, nor do I own the basics.

 **Modern AU.** If you do not like it, please do not read it, do something you enjoy, instead.

* * *

 **Tuesday 10.00- Madara**

"Is there a rule?"

He was dark and clean-shaven, sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and dark hair hanging over the shoulders. He was dressed in a tailored dark blue suit and wore a white shirt underneath. The dominant expression of his face was startled—anxious; an expression that might any moment leap into the dreadful stare of aggression and announce a total loss of self-control.

"What do you mean?" The therapist asked, following the pacing man with his sharp dark eyes.

"About how to start." Madara cocked an eyebrow, puzzled more by each second that passed.

"Why don't we sit down first?"

"Well, whatever. I am not on therapy. That's for sick people. I don't need a doctor." He answered quite bluntly, looking straight into the other's eyes.

Both took their seats. The room was tall, lined with bookcases, and, where the wall showed between them, long windows rose from floor to the ceiling, flooding the chamber with orange sunlight.

There was a table near the doctor's elbow upon which was a green cloth, and upon it what he would have called a silver Standish —a tray with inkstands—quill pens, a calf-bound book or two and some papers. He sat in a wooden armchair and his clients seated themselves on a large maroon velvet sofa on which small square pillows were put for comfort. Between therapist and client was placed a long narrow table for use of the patients, generally used for placing teapot and box of tissues upon it.

"Then how can I help you?"

"Do you believe there are better therapists than you?" Madara asked, looking straight at the other. He leaned his back against the maroon velvet sofa and crossed his legs as an unconscious desire of alienation.

"I believe yes."

"I was told you are the best." The man scoffed and resumed. "I have checked it. I checked my coworkers, friends, your former patients and I even called one of your relatives."

"Is it **this** important to have the best around you?" The therapist asked, slightly perplexed. For one thing, he did not like being called better than others, and for another, he also quite disliked people investigating after him and thus, invading his private space.

"Of course. We all want the best of things, of wine, women, and cars…Even therapists. But tell me Kakashi Hatake, don't you recognize me?"

"No, sorry…Should I?"

"You can usually find me in the news but I guess people like you don't watch television."

"I prefer to read if that is what you mean."

"Certainly." Madara nodded. "I am Madara Uchiha. I am the Uchiha Corporation's head. I am basically my enterprise."

"The country's most influential company of heavy machinery, if I am not mistaken." The silver-crowned man nodded in acknowledgment.

"You are not. And also, I ran for presidency last month; albeit, I'd had to temporarily hand over my business to my brother. You know, law."

"I vaguely recall your face now, I apologize." Kakashi bowed his head a little.

"The Uchiha name has been in politics even before the foundation of our Corporation. However…after we didn't even get into the Diet1, one of my employers committed suicide. He stabbed himself ten times in the stomach with a tantō after beheading his wife and children. Before the results of the election, I told everyone that in case they don't work hard enough for us to win, there will be losses in our number. We cannot afford so many useless people, you see. I fired him two months ago."

"Do you believe that the two are in connection with one another?"

"I know it. I don't think it."

"How do you know?"

"I read his journal. He stated it clearly that I am to blame, that I am just as heartless as any of our clan members. That we do not care about anything or anyone, only about power. That we are sick and selfish bastards tainted with insanity. A normal person doesn't do something like this. He was weak."

"When did you hear about the news? Can you recall the moment?"

"My brother, Izuna showed it to me one morning. It took us tremendous paperwork to prove we did everything by the rules, starting from firing him. The papers wouldn't leave us alone since, especially me. I did not want to become a leader; my father put this responsibility upon me. And then, when this shit went down, I felt like him. He would just manage everything about mother's funeral like a robot and when I asked how he felt, he said it is duty. A year later he married another woman. They lived a whole life together and that is what everything meant to him. Ridiculous."

"Don't you think it is interesting that you bring up this memory now?"

Madara folded his arms over his chest and glared at the other, clearly vexed by the words in his ears. "You certainly have no sympathy, making a parallel between my mother's death and this crazy weak person. Her loss was the worst thing in my life!" He replied as if Kakashi's atrocity had smacked him in the face.

The two men looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and something in the younger of them shrank. This was all beyond his ken a little. An odd hint of bleak and cruel reality was in the air, making him shiver along nerves that were normally inactive. The uneasiness he felt about Madara became light alarm. His conscience pricked him.

"I only need your opinion." Madara said with vehemence as he at length broke the silence, also uneasy in the other's company. Or perhaps it was the atmosphere, he could not tell, but something most certainly disturbed his peace, if peace there was at all in him.

There came a short pause again.

"Why do I feel like you're testing me?" Kakashi cleared his throat and straightened his back in his wooden armchair, and leaned to the side of his little table.

"Listen, I come here, opening up, it is the least I want to know if it is all worth or not."

"Continue."

"So…I called a friend that afternoon, you know I couldn't get to work in time, I was late, I felt sick, left my car key at home. I needed to release the tension. So we went running. And my heart stopped beating. A typical case of infarction. Obito called the hospital. I survived as you can see."

Here came a strange pause of irresolution from the therapist's side, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, Madara went on, asking: "Don't you want to hear what I saw? While I was dead? Lights, tunnel, shit like that?"

"Should I be concerned about that?" He asked, his demeanor always calm and severe.

Madara stopped because he hardly knew how to continue. There was a minute's silence. But it was not an empty silence, though no word broke it. The Uchiha's face was a study.

"Do you remember anything from it?" Kakashi pressed on at length.

"I recalled my childhood, a childhood memory from it. Something my friend's grandmother told me. When she saw her husband, that day she found him dead, he was in the tub with the biggest erection she had ever seen. That is what I saw. And I kept hoping I wouldn't die being like that. I was in the hospital for 4 days in the ICU then 3 days more resting. Then I went⸺"

"I would be more interested in⸺" suggested Kakashi, interrupting at a venture.

"Shut up! Don't be so damn impatient!" Madara yelled at the other in sheer indignation. "I am trying to speak here." He leaned forward with a manner eager, fervent, almost impetuous with suppressed desire for action.

Kakashi bowed his head a little in apology and bit upon his lower lip as he did it when he was uncomfortable.

Madara leaned back against the velvet sofa and resumed. "I was dead for 4 minutes."

He sounded like there was something with significance behind his uttered words but Kakashi could not find it so he asked; "Is that a lot?"

"Two minutes are the most someone is let dead. I was deep in that tunnel wasn't I?" Madara scoffed.

"But you are here, against your circumstances."

The politician hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes.

Kakashi did not speak a word but simply locked his gaze with the man in front of him.

Madara grew upset once more; there was impatience, half anger in his tone; "What the hell are you talking about?"

"That all that you have told me shows that both in body and mind you are entitled to keep on living. You do not want to stop living. But it seems like your environment doesn't wholly support that need of yours." The last words appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with it a relapse into gloom for the other man. Kakashi noticed Madara's sudden tremor of the hands that may have bloomed from truth or the denial of truth. He went on suggestively; "Aren't you disappointed? Aren't you mad at yourself? That your perfectly functioning body disappointed you?"

"It didn't. This happens. But I am back. Beauty and skill come together, this is evolution. I was always perfect in my entire life. We were born to be perfect."

"We?" The therapist furrowed his eyebrows, suddenly thrown off his guard. He grew wholly confused at the man's reaction. He wished to understand him.

"Us. Those, who form the world, who make the hard decisions, those decisions that actually matter. Life chose us, _leaders_ to be the best, to have the best and to look the best."

"And when your best is not the best, do you feel disappointed?"

"Gosh, you don't get it. How much time do we have left?" Madara sighed disparagingly, vexed at the other's obscurity. Certainly, they did not belong to one group. Kakashi Hatake was just a therapist who couldn't even comprehend the grandeur of those higher on the social ladder.

"I will tell you when we are finished."

"I came here to ask your opinion, nothing else. My wife said I have gone mad but I thought I'd go to the funeral of Zetsu and make a speech above his grave. So? What do you think?"

"What is the conception of good or bad in your mind?"

"Should I go or not? Can we cut this bullshit and speak clearly?"

Kakashi corrected himself, hoping Madara understood the motives of his questions. "Why do you want to be there? What do you want me to say?"

"That I can pay for this "feast" if they so badly want it and I can spare more coins for whatever the relatives need."

"You could simply make an announcement in the newspaper if you wished so. I don't see the point in why you would need to go there personally."

"I told you I need an objective opinion about whether I should go there or not!" Broke out the politician, gesturing with his arms in the air. "You are just making me furious, nothing else."

"Why objective?" Kakashi asked, his voice still calm, ⸺as much as his patience allowed him to be.

"My wife needs it okay? Not me! I guess she wants a professional to tell her I am not crazy."

"You expect me to take responsibility for whatever you want to do?"

"Don't make me look like an idiot okay? I can take responsibility for my own acts." Madara growled.

"I am merely trying to dissect this problem. You came here to have someone tell you what to do. You also mentioned that you were chosen to carry the burden of your clan's and what they do; it is **not** you who chose it. Wouldn't it all mean that perhaps you are here so that burden can now be taken off your shoulders, and you could breathe again?

There came a tense silence in the room just then.

"Whatever. I guess I can't get a normal answer out of you." Said the other, whose tangled thoughts struggled with incredulity and belief as he heard this strange new thing spoken to him. This was all too much his spirit could bear. Madara sprang to his feet and threw some money on the long dark table that was between them. He looked down at the therapist as he would look down at the world and said disdainfully. "And they said you're the best."

"I am not the best. And your wife is not the best either. Nobody is the best. You are. Let's think over what you want to do. Someone kills his whole family, blaming you." Kakashi sighed, his tone lightly raised but not with anger that would have been obvious from his part, but rather with anguish.

Madara sat back down with apparent reluctance and sighed. _Somewhere deep inside, he wanted to be saved, just like everyone else_. "What do you want to hear now?"

"For instance, how much did you run?"

"I ran for 5 hours."

"How much did you rest?"

"I did not."

"You're telling me that you almost ran a marathon without rest."

Madara nodded and Kakashi resumed, his usual demeanor regained. "You said you were sick and yet you went to run."

"I was getting better." He frowned, folding arms over chest.

"This is it? This is all you have understood from what I told you?"

The Uchiha's forehead wrinkled. He was obviously struggling with following the man's mind.

He waited a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes. "Do you know what I think? I think that you do everything in your power not to have to return to work again."

"Very nice." Madara shook his head, stunned a moment.

"Of course, we should be talking⸺"

His anger gained upon him as he said it; "Shut the hell up! You have no idea what you're talking about! I want to do anything to go back to the only thing I love! The only thing I am good at!" he cried; "Just answer my question for fuck's sake!"

Kakashi waited a moment, hunting for the words that he could use without upsetting him even further. "I can't tell you what you want to hear." Kakashi whispered and bit upon his lower lip.

" **I** am paying **you**!" cried Madara suddenly, standing up again.

"I don't care about your money. Don't you believe that someone might be doing something out of passion and not money?" Corrected the other, master of himself again.

There was a deep silence in the little room. Madara stood still in the room, as though struck in the face. He shivered. He kept silent and the silence seemed to him long and curious. His heart was throbbing, the blood in his veins played strange tricks. He did not understand his body's reaction but there was certainly _something i_ n the last sentences of the man that struck him cold. "Can I make a coffee?"

"Next time. Come next time." Kakashi looked up at him and said. He rose from the chair and bowed in politeness and the other did too.

"All right..." Was all Madara said and reluctant in body and soul, he at length vacated the room.

Kakashi sighed and fell back into his chair, and for several long moments, he remained motionless, his eyes fixated upon the ceiling.

By his friends, Kakashi Hatake was regarded as an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice—a therapist. That a man of independent means should devote his time to counseling, chiefly helping people who could either not pay or paid what they felt suitable, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul, whose first desire was to help those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.

He took no fixed fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very special reason. And it was these whom he desired to help: cases often requiring special and patient study.

To look at, —he was now past thirty—he was broadly built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge and self-confidence, while at the same time they made one think of that wondrous gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close white beard concealed the mouth without disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined away. From his manner,—so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,—few could have guessed the strength of purpose that burned within like a great flame.

The next step was that Kakashi shut his eyes and determined to give rest every chance. Excitement of peace and quiet asserted themselves in another form—that of making pleasant mental pictures. Experto crede, pictures do come to the closed eyes of one trying to sleep, and are often so little to his taste that he must open his eyes and disperse them. His experience on this matter could have been a very satisfying one if his phone had not rung a moment later. With a long deep sigh, he reached his hand into his pocket and only then he opened his eyes to see the screen. It was a text from his fiancée.

' _Lunch together?'_

 _Kakashi thought for a second and replied._

' _I have patients until 5.'_

' _Dinner?'_

' _Sounds good. Should I buy anything on the way home?'_

' _No, just bring yourself! We miss you!'_

There was a photo attached to the message in which his lover and their pug waved him. Kakashi smiled and texted back to her.

' _See you later, Rin-chan.'_

' _See you Kakashi-kun!'_ ⸺and half a dozen of little hearts he read after.

The ringing bell broke the spell of romance and Kakashi rose from the chair languidly.

 **Tuesday 11.00- Tsunade**

At the doorstep stood a young woman. Her face wore an air of gravity touched by sadness, sternness about the lips counteracted by a kindling beauty in the eyes that betrayed enthusiasm nobly regulated. There was a suggestion of stateliness in the woman that made the impression very sharp. Her clothing emphasized it. She wore a dark green dress that was strict in its simplicity with matching high heels, bag and shawl. There was temperance in her somewhere.

Kakashi bowed to greet her and gestured with his arm the way to the counseling room. She returned the greeting and followed him without a word. Her quietness betrayed significance. They both sat down.

"How can I help you?" He smiled as he drew his chair up to a convenient position and prepared to listen attentively to what she had to say. He rested his elbows on the armrest and tilted his head on one side as he always did when he wished to absorb the real meaning of a monologue that might be inadequately expressed, for by this method he found it easier to set himself in tune with the living thoughts that lay behind the broken words.

The woman was fidgeting with her fingers. She drew a nervous sigh as she watched the man making himself comfortable to listen.

"I'm not entirely inexperienced. I have already been at other therapists." She began, a little more at ease as the words seemed to flow their natural course. "The last one recommended you. Kurenai-sama."

"Kurenai recommended me to you?" Kakashi asked calmly, fixing the glasses ⸺that lay beside the Standish⸺ on his nose bridge.

"Yeah, why?"

"And why did you turn to her?"

"Well," She giggled nervously and resumed; "a friend of mine phrased it quite well…I like to live too much…If you get what I mean…" She paused a moment to recover her thoughts. "She said a lot of nice things, this Kurenai-sama…"

"Why did you seek her out?"

"I give a chance to everyone. But I felt after the first counseling that something was off…I guess I just needed a male therapist."

"I see."

"You don't like each other."

"Why do you think that?" Kakashi wrinkled his forehead slightly.

"Because you both seem so diplomatic about one another." The woman smiled and caressed a tendril of her long golden hair behind her ear.

The man in front of her noticed it but pretended to be ignorant of her feminine gesture. She was beautiful, far prettier than most women in Japan.

"You just said that she said nice things of me." He recuperated his thoughts as he said and found himself fidgeting in the chair; there rose in him a sudden wave of discomfort.

"Yes, but she was sort of cold…" She frowned a little and traveled her eyes away from his. "So sorry...I really didn't like her…She looked like a Buddhist statue, showing no feelings or anything."

"What kind of emotions were you expecting…?" Here, Kakashi looked down at the paper on his lap and lifted his eyes back at her as he added; "Tsunade?"

She fixed her bright orbs on his. "I don't remember how much I've told you in the phone."

"Basically nothing, only that you wanted to talk."

He smiled and she smiled back at him. It was a reckless moment of gentleness.

"Well kind of, yeah…" She gulped and began fidgeting with her fingers again. "What do you want to know?"

"I am interested in everything you wish to share with me" He said soothingly and with deep attention in his manner.

"I am studying medicine at the Konoha University. I uh⸺ live in a small flat which we used to rent together with my boyfriend but uh⸺, since we are broken up, it is just me there. I wouldn't say I fill the space…It gets quite lonely sometimes. When Dan left, he took every painting, furniture, cutlery, even. So now…it's...a little empty. In my theory, this is thus me."

"Empty?"

"Let's say that…" answered the other as truthfully as she could. "So...Uh⸺ what else am I supposed to say? I have a little brother Nawaki-kun, he is about 8 years younger than me and he lives with our grandfather in Osaka. Gramps has this giant wooden house with a large Zen garden at the back and the front is always filled with colorful flowers as if the whole home came out of some fairy tale. Now I don't have a boyfriend but I can't complain."

Kakashi nodded with a smile, encouraging her to carry on.

"I don't know, there's nothing coming to my mind right now that should be said at the beginning…" Tsunade blushed and shot her gaze on her lap. She brushed her silky hair back again, feeling suddenly that same nervousness as before.

"Then let's speak about things you don't wish to say at the beginning." Proposed Kakashi with his best abilities to sound soothing.

"Shouldn't we get to know each other a bit more first?" She looked back up at him with a curious expression.

"Say everything in the order you feel most appropriate then."

"You're nice, much nicer than those previous psycho-squirrels."

Kakashi chuckled. "Squirrels?"

"Yeah…uh⸺" The woman hesitated and tried to smile and her flawless face flushed once more.

"We get to be called on much worse names, don't worry."

"You're different. You know, with the first, I hated that he would keep leaning from side to side and just stare at you. And then, with Kurenai-sama… She told me some stupid joke twice. The same stupid joke. I repeat; twice. She forgot that she had already told me that the first time I went to her. Do you know what this means? That she does not care about you, or me. She does not notice you. I went there to talk about a personal, private problem of mine and she would repeat some stupid joke she likes, probably as she does it to everyone else. She would keep asking what is your name, how old are you, where do you live, who are your parents, do you have a brother, and when I'd tell her that my brother has autism, you should have seen her face and that sudden glow in her eyes like those tiny lamps you know in drawings like "There is her problem!" and she would tell me simply that these "kinds of people" have more special needs and require more help and affection. Like what the hell, how dare she says "these kinds of people"? First of all, Nawaki-kun is not a "kind of people" and secondly, I am the one in this damn counseling, she should notice **me** , not repeat her same shitty joke." She said it all in a breath, her expression now fuming with vexation.

"Did you share these thoughts with her too?"

"You don' tell the waiter "sorry, your cook sucks", and then never go there again, do you?"

For twenty seconds he stared into his visitor's face intently, as though he would force out of her the thought that lay deeper underneath. His features seemed working visibly, yet behind a mask of strong control. "Did you decline your appointments with her?"

"She did not a have sleepless night if this is what you're asking. She left me a voice message, saying we could uh⸺ speak more, but it sounded like coming from a dead person. It doesn't matter if I declined it or not, I am sure she feels the same way."

"What did she do to hurt you so deeply, Tsunade?"

"She did not hurt me. I just…I don't believe that we should be pretending to care when we are nothing but strangers. She made me feel like I was invisible. That was too much. Isn't that enough?"

"It is enough…" Kakashi nodded. "I am listening."

"What do you want me to say?" She was uneasy, even perhaps afraid; something in life distressed her, and she had need of him. She was too unselfish to say this, but it ran everywhere between the lines. He saw it clearly now.

"How can I help you?" He said, with a quiet smile that won confidence, yet deprecated unnecessary words.

"Okay, here you go." ventured the little woman again, looking up engagingly into his face and betraying anxiety and eagerness in every gesture. "There is a thing. I feel like I haven't been able to be my usual self and go with my studies how I used to. I have just finished my field-work at the Konoha Hospital; it is the best hospital in the whole region if not the entire country. And now all I should be doing is just finishing my thesis. However⸺" She smiled and rubbed her forehead anxiously; "Gosh this is so embarrassing to talk about it. I don't know what has gotten into me I cannot focus on writing my thesis, I am feverish."

"Feverish?" asked Kakashi gently.

" _That_ way…" She turned red like crimson blood and looked away from him for a second. "You know…I cannot stop wanting to do it…And I don't think this is normal, I mean this feverish hunger."

"I am not entirely certain if I got this right…" Kakashi leaned closer in his chair towards her. "Sexually overheated?"

Tsunade stared into his face blushing, but the man's naïve ignorance of such a diagnosis truly amused her.

"Tsunade…You only have to speak about things you feel comfortable with here."

"Well since Dan and I broke up…I got a bit…overboard with this but perhaps it is normal at my age...I mean how much is normal? How many men are still normal at 23? At university, I heard they call me nymphomaniac…Am I?" She half whispered, as though telling something disagreeable.

"Listen, nymphomania is not a scientifically proven illness."

The woman cocked her brows, feeling as if a stone was taken off her heart. "So I am not ill?"

"No…" Kakashi leaned back in his chair. "Scientifically speaking no."

"Then I guess I am cured." The woman laughed on a merry, charming tone and resumed, her mood lit up. "I should have come to you in the first place."

However, the therapist remained severe and calm. "Listen, this may not be your problem. There may be something else that brought you here. Tell me more about what happened after Dan and you broke up."

"I uh⸺ got together with a professor of mine, Orochimaru. He was my uh⸺ anatomy professor when I began my studies. It is nothing like the relationship with Dan, you know uh⸺ we were together for 5 years. Dan left about a few months ago. I guess he could not keep up with me. I wanted more."

"What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?"

"Like more what? More sex, more creativity?"

"More sex…"

Kakashi nodded and fidgeted again in his chair. The theme was quite common to be brought up, but he noticed himself feeling uneasy again. "Was it always like this?"

"No…It uh⸺ just happened that I started needing more."

"What about your recent relationship?"

"I said that I am not in one, for a reason. This is not a relationship with Orochimaru."

"Then what is it?"

"We are lovers. He sleeps over whenever we are bored. He will flee soon too, I know."

"How do you know this?"

"Whenever he comes over, we do it for hours. Usually for 3 or 4 hours. I don't feel good without less. I have needs and he can still satisfy them. But after fucking, he can barely stand on his legs. He is only 10 years older; I mean men are still supposed to be quite active that age don't they?" She continued earnestly, "And he said to me once jokingly that this is not normal and I asked him what I am supposed to do? And he said, nothing, you just love living too much."

"You sounded like your problem is that you love living."

"Yeah. It is." She looked him in the face, lowering her voice to prevent her emotion betraying itself too obviously. "Isn't it?"

He waited two full minutes and more with an answer. His eyes were so intent upon the woman's and understood thus all that lay behind the pregnant little sentences.

"Whatever, we will break up soon."

"And how will that happen?"

"How am I supposed to know it?"

"Without a word you vanish?"

"Do you consider me cruel?"

"Not at all." He said gently and added, "But I find it interesting that so far you have told about two kinds of relationships you have. And in both, the end was quite important to you."

"So?"

"Are you ending your relationships like your therapies?

"Why? Why do you care? How am I supposed to behave? Just tell them the truth so they can feel shitty?"

"So you leave without a word."

The woman narrowed her eyes and folded her arms over her bosom.

"How did your relationship with Dan end?"

"Badly. Can a relationship like this end well? I felt like this is not enough and he felt like I was too much. He met some wench and she was the perfect excuse to leave."

"So he left you?"

"I guess. He told me that he may have feelings for someone else. I never picked up the phone after."

"Perhaps he really wished to talk about it with you because he cared about you."

"It doesn't matter. We don't have much time. And my exams are coming. Can you help me? I need my diploma."

"Why?"

"Because."

"What happens if you don't get it this semester?"

"Nothing."

"Okay, what do you think, how can I help you?" Kakashi asked sympathetically.

"Give me the cure." She said on a severe tone and that made him smile warmheartedly.

"I am afraid there is no cure in this field. Not that kind you seek."

Tsunade's lips curled upward without true intention and they kept looking at each other for a short while.

The therapist debated several questions vaguely in his mind; only his mind, being disturbed, could not hold the balance exactly true. Tsunade's influence was upon him. A possibility, remote, seductive, dangerous, began to beckon to him, but from somewhere just outside his reasoning mind. His pulse quickened. He felt the forbidden impulse in him gathering force and tried to call a halt within.

"All right…Let me show you something. The woman's voice slipped in between his tumbling thoughts, as though they stopped the dangerous thoughts instinctively from blooming. There was a new excitement added to life as she pulled her handbag closer to her side and packed the messily stuffed papers on the sofa. She pulled out a time-worn book and handed it over to the man.

"This was my father journal. He was working on something very amazing, which could change the history of medicine." She spoke with a new kind of light in her voice and turned several pages with such a childish excitement, Kakashi felt wholly bewitched. "He wanted to heal people using spirit energy."

"Spirit energy?"

And Tsunade, breaking bounds, let her speech burst forth in a stream of excited explanation, "Yes. The spiritual and psychological entanglements that lead to suffering also can result in illness of all sorts. Many Tibetan Buddhist tools exist for awakening, for removing those entanglements, also promote relaxation and healing by spirit energy. In traditional Tibetan culture, practicing healing such a way and using prayer wheels, incense, prayer flags and other methods all work together with Tibetan herbal medicine in healing illness and maintaining health.." She laughed and blushed; "Don't look at me like that. You know the saying that everything is decided in the brain?" Tsunade asked it half below her breath.

Kakashi nodded, looking halfway at her and at the journal. He felt a touch of awe as he heard this yet inexperienced, genuinely honest woman speak with conviction of such curious things.

"I do." Was the reply.

"I am not talking about curing cancer. I am just simply talking about healing minor sicknesses, even wounds, making the process of recovery become much faster. Just imagine all that time we could save and bandages and doctors wouldn't be so busy with things that we could avoid!"

And Kakashi, as he listened, seemed built on wires, while searching questions shot forth like blows into his mind. The woman's sudden increase of enthusiasm was infectious. He leaped intuitively to the thing in Tsunade's thought. "How does it work?"

"Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying a specific prayer out loud or silently to oneself, invokes Buddha's powerful benevolent attention and blesses the person, if possible, by opening his chakra points. The spiritual energy centers that can be found all over the body. That way, either the person can help someone heal, or feel better or do it on themselves. I think it is amazing and unbelievable at the same time, but my father had collected a great deal of articles and even tests about it! Do you see why I need your help? I cannot focus on this anymore…And I have to. I want to… Can you promise that you'll try and help me?" She gazed longingly yet still fierce with enthusiasm into his eyes. It was impossible to refuse her.

"I can promise that I will do everything to be help to you." Kakashi nodded as he spoke softly and the young woman smiled with the warmth of the sun.

"Deal." She bowed and began packing her things back into her bag. "You didn't say a price in the phone."

"I don't have fix prices. You are a student; I believe you are not swimming in money."

"But that's what puts the bread on your table." Tsunade tilted her head as she watched him.

"I uh⸺ guess 1500 yen then?"

"Thank you…" Tsunade nodded and they stood up. She handed him the amount. "Could I get some water please?" She asked with an odd feeling of nervousness which Kakashi did not notice.

She wavered where she stood. Looking about her, biting her lip then, while the therapist exited the chamber to bring a glass of fresh water, she perceived the astonishing beauty in the simplicity of the time and place, feeling it soak into her as by the very pores of her skin. From all sides this beauty rushed upon her heart. Some radiant, winged sense of wonder sped past her through the silent air.

A thrill of anxiety ran down every nerve. The hair of her head stood up. It was far from unfamiliar to her, being in the chamber of a shrink, but never before had she stood shuddering thus at its significance as now, so mysteriously within herself. Again she shivered and looked about her, touched by solemnity.

Personal life, indeed, was wrecked, destroyed, but something greater was on the way. She took a deep breath and placed a paper on the sofa and she was gone the next moment.

Kakashi only heard the slamming of the door. He walked back to catch the sight of her, but there was only that paper she had left there, waiting for him. Kakashi placed down the glass of water and lifted the document to his eyes.

His heart began to beat with violence as he read it. He felt the energy and zeal pour out of him. He was realizing in himself on a smaller scale what might take place with the woman in large. He shrank on the sofa and threw his notebook open, searching for her number. For a moment he could think no more. "Tsunade… You left your medical evidence here…It is most important that you call me back. Please."

1 Japanese Parliament


	2. Chapter 2

**Merry Christmas Everyone!**

* * *

 **Tuesday 21.00- Rin**

"You haven't touched your food." Her voice trembled as she began timidly, and then continuing with a nervous rush of words. "I thought at least you would be happy for your favorite dish…"

"I apologize, but I think I'm not too hungry." Kakashi replied with a forced empathy in his voice, for his mind and heart rushed their course elsewhere.

Rin sighed. Her hunger was now gone too. She felt only vexation. "What's wrong?"

Kakashi shook his head and answered, still deep in thoughts. "Nothing."

Rin took a deep sigh and tried to alter the moment; the fact that he was hours late from their date night and that he did not bother to feign the slightest enthusiasm towards the wedding plans she had been making all day were both put aside as the last effort made for a different kind of evening. She, in fact, was tired of this monotonousness. He was either swallowed in work or …well; she could not remember that other side of him.

"That office of yours really needs a good cleaning." She said it then with a half smile, searching for words, then added; "If you want I could go over and do it."

Kakashi put his chopsticks down and it was only then when he looked straight at her face. "Why are you suddenly so concerned about the patient's room? I thought you hated it." He said with conviction and downed the red wine that was in his glass.

Rin met the man's gaze with a faint redness coloring her cheeks. She thought it better to follow his actions and drank from the numbing crimson nepenthe. "To be honest with you, Kakashi…I am a little jealous of it" Her sentence was broken in half as she cleared her throat. She eventually added the end of the sentence; "…it is like a shrine to you."

There was a sudden pause between the lovers in which Kakashi returned his gaze at the untouched sushi and forced one piece down his throat, apparently belligerent to the thought of entering in a quarrel.

With a clearing of his throat, he then offered his eyes back upon her once again. "We can talk about the wedding until we finished dinner…I need to sleep early."

Rin sighed and shook her head. "Why are your job and that room more important to you than us?"

But he became visibly confused instead of shame; "Sorry, what?"

Rin resumed in that same half-chiding tone that she had just used a moment ago; "You never feel comfortable with me at your workplace…and you just brought up this marriage planning as an escape route from your private life…And **I** should be your private life."

He resented her reproach. But he was also aware that the woman resented his authority. "This is nonsense Rin-chan."

"Is it? Why do you do everything then, to lock me out?" Rin asked, wholly peppered, her arms crossed as she leaned away from the dining table.

He answered slowly after a decided interval; "What do you want to hear from me, Rin-chan?"

"That you care about us…"

"I do."

"Why don't you care about the most important day of our life then?"

"I told you we can discuss it. I am still here, Rin-chan."

"No…" She shook her head with vexation. "Your mind is elsewhere again. Something is more important again. What is it?"

"I think…I will call Kurenai."

"Who?"

"Kurenai Sarutobi."

"Her? After all that happened? Why do you want to see her?" She rolled her eyes in disbelief.

"I need to talk to someone." Was the calm answer.

"But I am here for you, aren't I good enough to you?"

He thought for a moment before he replied, evidently trying to be honest, yet hesitating how to describe the thing he had to say, "These are professional matters…A supervision, Rin-chan. I really need her help now."

"For Oblivion's sake." She huffed and puffed inside but wouldn't show it. She disdained showing too many emotions. It only meant she was weak.

"Why are you so hostile? Why do you think she would mean any threat?" He inquired softly.

"Don't…Just don't. I am not your patient."

Having wasted enough time with useless arguing, he asked, dropping the tone of quarrel, "Can you name just one thing that I do right, in your eyes?" For his criticism of human behavior, she told him, was crude and ignorant sometimes.

Rin, however, did not take the way of escape he offered.

"I feel fed up that you make me feel like it is a generosity when you decide to finally talk to me. Sometimes you deign to talk to me but other than that, I feel like I am just a cloud floating around you. This whole marriage planning…Like a courteous offer from you so that I would be pleased like a pet that is annoying with its love."

Kakashi watched her for a moment and thought. He then queried. "Your problem is that I forgot your sister's birthday party, isn't it?"

"My problem is that you don't realize what is happening around us. And with her. You know she has depression and she only trusts you."

"What did she want to tell me at her party?"

"Have you noticed that we stopped talking for several weeks now? Or that the party invitation was for you only? Of course, you didn't! Because you are just so perfect and are fine without the world. And I have to solve everything alone."

"How do you mean that you have to solve everything alone?"

"Our parents are divorcing, Kakashi. Our father has a twenty-year old mistress and my sister found it out." Stammered the woman as soon as she could find her tongue. "She blames **me** because it turns out, the girl works at the same workplace I do. She desperately wanted to talk to you because she is still living with them, but you didn't even care! She wanted to jump off the roof on her birthday, you idiot!"

There came a strange hush over the room, and between the two people sitting there facing one another. A perceptible shudder ran over the woman, still shaken from the words she had spoken.

"What did you advise her?" queried the therapist calmly.

"I offered to have her over for as long as she needs. I can't have her apply to college like this." Stammered Rin, unable to find words to express her emotions. "I believed you would not mind." Then she hesitated for a moment, searching the man's face anxiously.

"It's fine." Kakashi nodded.

"I hate this coldness of yours." Rin sprang from the table and turned her back to him for a moment. "Nothing can be more important than what happens in that patient's room."

"It is not true."

She was relentless, however. "You do the same with me. We just cannot be compared."

Kakashi sighed, leaned back in the chair at the table. He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling. "That's all?"

Rin turned to look at him, her expression sharp with pain and qualm. "When did you become like this? I am trying to approach you and you keep⸺…"

"I don't know what has gotten into **you** suddenly." Kakashi returned his gaze at her.

"Suddenly? I am going crazy. I am going crazy that there, you are an energetic, vigorous man and here at home, you are nothing but a bitter, slow, unmanly fumbler!

Kakashi cocked an eyebrow and took a moment to regain his cool. "All right. Perhaps I did not notice your family's suffering…Perhaps there are bigger problems at stake… I will talk to your sister when she comes here…Would that be fine, Rin-chan?"

She swallowed a tear as she inquired. "Why do we have to fight all the time?" She did not let him answer just yet and she added, "Are you disgusted with me?"

"What makes you think this?"

"Like I wouldn't exist… You don't approach me…You never talk to me…"

Opening a door so futilely where he would attempt to make her understand that he has always been like this, someone lost in his own thoughts and occupation, someone preferring to think rather than speak…It would have surely been of no use. So instead, he once again tried to use a gentler tone. "I have…10 minutes…Let's talk."

"All right." She nodded, hurt inside by the deadline of their conversation. "I met someone…" Rin heard her own voice whisper, hardly aware that she was saying it. She said it thickly, stupidly, a woman wavering and unsure of herself.

The air froze. Kakashi stared at her stupidly a moment, bereft of speech or wit. "What do you mean you met someone? Do I know him?" In the doctor's mind, there came a crash, as though something fell. There was dust, confusion, noise. Moral platitudes shouted at conventional admonitions. Warnings laughed and copy-book maxims shriveled up.

Further, she went on calmly, but a little white. "I want to start a family. With you or with someone else. I am not getting any older and honestly, Kakashi-kun, I thought that by now we would be arguing about our child's room wallpaper and we are still struggling about your work that will always matter more to you."

He ignored her chiding at the end of her speech. "Who is that someone else? I want to know."

"Are you serious? Now you are curious about me? Now, that there is someone else?"

"Who is it?"

"He is divorced, 35."

Kakashi blundered, hardly knowing what to think or say. "So he is not an unmanly fumbler."

Rin stammered badly; "He loves children…A new professor at the University, he teaches Geology."

"And you think I don't?"

"I think everything else about your damn job is more important than a child." She said with desperation rather than anger.

"Where did you meet?"

"Does it matter?"

Her answer seemed to indicate shame and joy, and though he caught the inference he did not take it up, having no desire to discuss them with her just then, indeed, if ever. Kakashi merely stared at her and listened. Questions, he felt sure, would be of little use now. Perhaps questions themselves were vain, for decisions may have already been made. It was better she should say the verdict in her own way and time.

"Do you remember the place where we would always have our morning coffee before you left to work? I met him there. I wanted to surprise you one morning…I went to buy a coffee for you but you declined to see me, saying you had some urgent matter, some crazy patient of yours as usual." She went on slowly, and always very timidly, "I left the money at home. He paid for me and we talked. Then we talked every morning. He made me feel happy. It was so easy to make me smile, Kakashi-kun. You were always good at it too. But you stopped wanting to see me smile. I let him kiss me the other day."

Kakashi had felt it already deep within; he was not completely ignorant of the environment; he was simply different. And the idea of another man was rather horrible. He shivered. "How long have you been lying to me? A month? Or a year?"

"He knows that I am engaged and it excites him."

"How can you come home like this?"

Rin sighed before she answered him. She walked to the counter and took her purse. "I feel like some trash, you know…But I still meet him a week later." She took her case out and lit a cigarette she did not want to smoke. It was a fresh habit, a sign of despair and a sense of being lost.

Kakashi rose from the table and walked to the large window that reached from floor to the ceiling. He left the matter there for a moment. He went out of the room by opening it and standing on the balcony before further explanation could cause tension. Disagreements grow into disdain from such tiny things—wrong adjectives, or a chance inflection of the voice. Rin had a right to her views of life as much as he had.

However, there were other thoughts working in the woman; she did not want to stop there. She needed to go further, hoping that pain would guide him back to her. She stepped beside him into the cold air and placed her hand on his.

"And you dare accuse me with neglecting this family? I don't do this on purpose if I do this at all. But you…You **are** doing it on purpose." He sighed and took his hand away, his indignation pleasing to her soul. He filled his lungs with the strong winter air and paused while he exhaled it slowly, as though tasting it with delight and understanding. He then resumed, unable or perhaps conscious of showing the traces of anger. "You betrayed us on purpose. Fuck, Rin-chan, you ruined the last chance to save this relationship." The man, perplexed and sorely hurt, felt that he drifted with a tide he found it difficult to stop. His mind worked furiously.

" **I** ruined it? If it is really ruined, then it had long been like that. And do you know what the worst in all of this is? That you never even noticed. You didn't even suspect it. Even if I was sleeping with someone else right in front of you, you wouldn't see it! That's how desperate I am, Kakashi!"

She once regarded him as a hero, sighed her relief upon his saintly shoulders, and accepted the peace he offered her with a grateful resignation. But now it all seemed like a masquerade where in fact her spirit had always longed for harboring passions and wild oaths on the altar of love. But he was never like that.

"Will you two end this or you want to keep meeting him?" He asked after a long interval of silence, now his manner calm and collected.

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" He turned his eyes from the city and the sky and looked at her questioningly.

She looked back at him as she said; "It depends on **you** , Kakashi." Rin said firmly, after a moment's pause and returned to the apartment shortly after, leaving him alone with feelings and thoughts.

And his heart sank as he stood there, his love died away on the instant, he felt numb. The contradictory position involved a perplexing state of heart and mind in both of them. Kakashi faltered inwardly and turned away from the stars. No words came to him that could describe his state of mind, at the moment.

Now, the home itself seemed a mere expression of a narrow, limited mind, and was sheer ugliness. He stood and stared, then moved about, and stood and stared again. Everywhere was this mockery of a sinister, unfinished aspect. He sought in vain to recover his normal point of view. His mind had found this evil garden of betrayal and jealousy and wandered to and fro in it, unable to escape.

He paused by the window a moment, listened attentively, and then resumed his pacing on the balcony to and fro. Clearly, he longed for action. Indifference, half-heartedness had no place in his composition. He felt his own blood take fire as he pondered.

 **Wednesday 8.00- Mei**

The overall look of the woman was a sham and pretence. It was this and her lithe, ragged yet always minutely graceful movements that suggested a caged creature—a creature tamed by fear and cruelty that cloaked themselves in wanton passions—pacing up and down, unable to realize why it got no farther, but always met the same bars in exactly the same place. The mind in her was barred but she did not know it.

Kakashi returned from the small chamber that opened from the main patient's room with a book about Psychoanalysis in his hands and found her sitting on the large velvet sofa, the impression left upon him was a tigress hidden underneath a dove's skin. She was sitting upright, her slender legs crossed, revealing every inch of her long thighs in that unnecessarily short blue dress of hers. It was so incongruous and captivating.

She moved quietly as he turned and closed the door behind him, and asked him respectfully, her eyes cast down as usual, whether he had minded her arriving a little early, her eyes wet and red from crying.

He sat down in his chair and took her folder in his lap, the glasses placed beside the silver Standish. For several minutes, they spoke no word, and the woman was softly weeping. Kakashi felt a little uncomfortable as a man feels when a woman is in such a state, and handed her a pack of tissues. He placed it on the long wooden table that separated the patient from the therapist.

With a polite nod of gratitude, she took one piece out and blew her nose. At length, she began. "I'm a little disappointed."

Kakashi listened.

"I thought the first cry would be better, I would feel relief coming."

"And? Aren't you a little relieved?"

She shook her head with a light giggle.

"Would you like me to make some tea?"

She nodded and leaned back on the sofa with a long, burdened sigh. Whilst Kakashi rose from his chair and went to the little counter at one corner of the room, where the tray with mugs and kettle stood, the woman resumed.

"I sat for 4 hours at the park."

"Where?" He asked as he put the water to boil.

"Down at the playground. I found myself here at dawn. I was thinking…How lame would it be to freeze to death in front of my psychologist's office." She smiled and her eyebrows wrinkled and she placed her hand on her stomach. "Aah, I feel so sick."

"You had a lot of drinks."

She hesitated a moment and said; "I am sorry…I shouldn't have come here…"

"You felt it important to come see me." Kakashi said sympathetically and handed her the warm tea. He sat back in his chair and took the folder in his lap.

She made no answer, but it seemed she wanted him to press on. He accepted her invitation. "Why don't you try and tell me what happened?"

Mei put down the tea cup beside the pack of tissues and leaned back, now a little comfortable, her eyes sharp with prurience. "Do you want hear the story with details or just the short version of it, doctor?"

"It can be the short, if that is easier for you." Kakashi proposed.

"It was fucked up, bad, horrible." Mei smiled.

"I think I would like to hear the whole story." Kakashi returned the gesture of her face.

"We had a fight. A nasty, shouting, throwing things kind of fight couples have. When I left him he was in the kitchen, crying. I called Chōjuro to meet me at the bar. You know, I really needed to speak with someone. After all, I cannot just call **you** in the middle of the night." She added with a dab of her hand and batted her long lashes as she spoke it.

"If there is a big problem, you can call me." Kakashi replied with empathy.

"Right…" Mei smirked, and the naivety of the man amused her. "And your girlfriend must have been very happy if someone like me had need of you." She pressed on with further meaning in her words than a simple mind would observe.

Kakashi swallowed as if there was something in his throat but did not make a comment on it. Yesterday's quarrel with Rin brought no pleasant memories that could be of use now. He did not care what would have she said, in fact. There were bigger problems between them than patient's calls.

"Okay. I think I'll call a cab…This is not working…" She rose from the sofa with a dramatic motion and felt a sudden wave of vertigo seize her. She sat back down with the aid of her therapist. Kakashi sprang from his chair and took her hand to help her balance her movements.

"Mei, what happened in the bar?"

"We drank…There was a guy…Ah, you know what, let's really leave it. You would be shocked to know what happened…" She groaned and placed her hand over her stomach again. "I am going to throw up…"

"Lay down, please." Kakashi proposed on a gentle tone and placed a pillow under her head.

"I can't throw up here…"

"Why? Are you afraid to lose your self-control with me?" He said, already sitting.

She looked at him with large, innocent eyes.

"You come here at the break of dawn, you cry in front of my door for hours…"

She pressed her lips in a soft smile, watching him as he remained speaking, their eyes locked.

"I feel like this is what you are hoping to do; _lose control_ , in front of me."

The moment had been a really pleasant one, listening to the man's deep, comforting husky voice but the sudden ringing in her purse broke the captivating atmosphere. She sat up slowly and pulled the Iphone out. Her face suddenly twisted with vexation. "Ao. Why the fuck he is calling?"

"Love, perhaps?"

"Right…" She said it with disdain and hung up on him.

"Perhaps he is afraid?"

"Oh come on…" She paused to recover her demeanor. "He gave me an ultimatum."

"Ao-sama?"

"Yeah." Mei nodded and crossed her legs as she began. _"Either we get married or we are over."_ She cleared her throat. There was a lot to tell him. She enjoyed this. "We were watching TV. He stepped in front of me, switching it off. He was standing, with teary eyes and says: _"It's enough. I can't do this anymore."_ He was literally crying! I guess he was trying to manipulate me with this female shit. He thought I would become motherly or sensitive, or did he expect me to become passionate? That tears would turn me on? I seriously don't know. I got this dress from him."

She pointed at her frame and resumed. "I met this friend, Chōjuro. We were drinking. And there was this guy, clean shaven, large, sharp eyes and smile. His hair was thick like yours but it was dark, like ocean blue. Then Chōchō said he was tired, so he left early. I was there alone. And the guy came over to me. And do you know what he said? _"You look sad. It looks good on you."_ Do you get it? Yeah…"

She smiled and kept on talking. "He won me with this. What do you think Kakashi? Does sadness look good on me? I have no idea how much I had drunk by that time. He then asked if I wanted to go up to his place. I told him I needed to go to the restroom to freshen up. But he just followed me. I told him I just needed to pee. He said _"of course, babe, of course."_ And then, I thought why not? Should I really get married without fucking in a bar's restroom? Before I become a boring housewife, shouldn't I live a little? He locked the door of the cabin…I was starting to feel hot... He unfastened his zipper and stood in front of me with his giant cock. I touched him…and…I felt like a sixteen-year old who touches cock the first time. He turned me against the wall, my breasts rubbing it. He pulled down my stockings and pulled down my panties. In a second, he got the condom out of his pocket, put it on and he forced me apart. He grunted. And it reminded me of Ao in the morning, making the same sound when peeing. And then I became really sad…And the guy was meanwhile trying to break into me. I forced my legs tight together. I felt like I was unable to do this. I told him that I was sorry but I couldn't do this, because I had someone else."

Kakashi nodded and he kept on listening to her.

"Then, he grabbed my hand and told me _; "You don't think you can just leave me like this."_ And I asked; _"Do you want my money?"_ … And he just said; _"It's enough if you give me a blowjob. We can stay friends that way and I will not tell your boyfriend. It's enough if you put my cock in your mouth."_ She gulped and resumed, her voice breaking with the confession. "I was afraid, Kakashi… I thought of you; ⸺ _what would you think, what would you say_?"

"And how did you imagine our conversation?"

"I imagined that you were sitting like now…and…"

"And you came here straight to tell me this…You escaped from that man."

"No…I didn't…I gave him what he wanted." Here, she made a deliberate pause and looked deep into his eyes. Her expression then returned to that of a lost lamb's. "I still feel him in my hands…Sorry..." Mei rushed to the little restroom that was beside the entrance door. She shut the door and knelt on the cold tiles, throwing up in the toilet. She needed a second before she flushed it and rose back on her feet. She found a small comb in the cabinet and combed her hair and took some pills to recover her nausea. By the time she returned, Kakashi made some more tea. She sat back down on the sofa.

"Are you feeling better?"

"Yes…Sorry."

"There is nothing to say sorry about."

"I stole a little from your toothpaste and antiemetic...So…What do you think of my little story?"

"This…is a very strong story…That one forgets to ask, what induced it? Is there a reason that Ao-sama asked to marry you now? Didn't something happen the past few days that made him scared and this was his way of hoping to keep you?

"I don't know…He thinks we are running out of time or something…I don't know." She replied apathetically.

"Are you sure?"

"I don't know…He thinks I have someone. He keeps poking around, he is odd. Isn't it funny, though? The fight started because of this."

"You said the fight just happened."

"Yeah, well before we were watching TV we were having dinner and he had that typical sad puppy face. I hate it, and I told him to spit it out, his fucking problem. He said he doesn't know what he wants. And I told him okay, decide then, we either get married or we are done."

"It was **you**."

"Me?" Mei grew confused. "What are you talking about?"

"It was you who brought this up. **You** gave him the ultimatum."

"No, it was **him.** "

"I feel like you wanted to corner him. Force him to make a decision that would benefit **you** only."

"No…this…It's not about it...It wasn't about that…"

"Mei…the subject of the argument you had provoked wasn't about this? It wasn't about forcing him to decide he either behaved like a man or he had no place by your side?"

She crossed her arms, feeling uncomfortable. "I didn't provoke the argument…"

"Perhaps you weren't aware of it but that is what you did. Why was it so important that he makes this decision now?"

"Because Ao is right…I have been cheating on him." The woman's cheeks flushed so that the color and the fire in her eyes made her positively sweet.

Kakashi's eyes narrowed in confusion. "With whom? You haven't mentioned him before."

Mei smiled. "But of course I did. He is the only one I talk to….No words necessary…I hope you are not trying to force me to state the obvious." And her dark eyes shone like lamps.

Kakashi fidgeted in his chair in a queer feeling of distress, his eyes suddenly glued to the papers in his lap. "I am not exactly certain I understand you."

She paused and looked about her with a startled air. "Well…I wasn't expecting this…"

However, she did not finish the sentence, for the two exchanged a glance that rendered it unnecessary.

Kakashi mopped his forehead. The uncomfortable, somewhat resigned look in his eyes now dominated the whole face. But he pulled himself together with the following moment, and resumed, his face growing quickly soft again. "Then? Tell me what you expected."

"I had two kinds of scripts in my head. In one, you stand up, embrace me and say: _"I love you too"_ …And then we make love on this sofa." She said, patting it with her long fingers.

"And in the other one?"

"I imagined the same without the love making."

"I see."

"Don't do this. I am deadly embarrassed that you brought this up whilst pretending to not know about it." She began weakly.

"You are only feeling this now about me." Was the calm reply.

"You're wrong. I've felt it since the first time…I thought it was just lust, a simple passion of the soul...I thought that it would pass…But it is getting worse. You're the center of my life." She confessed, recklessness increasing in her.

"I believe that this is just one escape route for you to make the decision about the ultimatum. Or to make the decision instead of Ao-sama as well. I am your therapist. You know the rules, Mei." Was the answer.

"When I stepped into the cabin with that guy I kept thinking it was you...That is why it was so good at the beginning…and then when he grunted, reality snapped in. I knew it was someone else. And that I cannot do it. I know this feeling is wrong. I am aware of it. I won't call you at night. I won't bother you." Her heart beat with violence even as she said it; Mei, for the moment said no more. Her spiritual discernment was equal to her boldness. Having planted the seed, she left it to grow or die. The decision was not for her.

"I am glad that you think so soundly in this matter."

In the light of the sun the two sat facing each other, listening, waiting for the other to break the stillness. Moments of utter quiet passed, though how long none of them could say. In Kakashi's mind was wild confusion. How could he justify such a mad proposal? Yet how could he refuse the invitation, preposterous though it was? The enticement was very great; temptation rushed upon him. Here was an opportunity to take or leave. He fought the battle in terms of naked souls, while the ordinary four-cornered morality hid its face awhile. He heard himself explaining, delaying, hedging, half-toying with the problem.

But the redemption of a soul was at stake, and he tried to forget the environment, the cruelty of lust and conditions of modern thought and belief. Then, suddenly, something in him seemed to decide finally for itself. His phone buzzed in his pocket and the name upon the screen clashed into his heart with mercilessness. "Our time is over." He lowered his voice suddenly, his attention averted, his mind clear and sane again.

"Yes." She nodded and rose from the sofa and with wicked disappointment.

"I get you a cab if you'd like."

Mei shook her head and put her blue coat over her shoulders.

"Are you sure?" Kakashi asked, already on his feet.

"I am fine." Came the cold reply, and the woman rushed to the entrance door.

"Don't get cold, Mei…"

"I'll figure it out. Don't worry." And with those words, she was swiftly gone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Once again here's my present for you Dear Readers!**

 **Next chapters of the stories will be a bit slow again since I have exams coming up in two weeks. After that, you will hear more from me!** **Thank you for your patience and I hope you stay tuned!**

 **Happy 2019 and lot of fan fictions!**

* * *

 **Friday 20.00- Kurenai**

"Hello Kurenai…"

"Hi…Come, come on in." Kurenai stepped away from the door and welcomed the man inside the little apartment.

"I got stuck in the elevator for a moment. I forgot the floor…" He said with a soft smile as he took off his coat and left it in the antechamber. Kakashi knew the place well and he walked comfortably to the living-room in which he sat even more comfortably.

"That is my seat, you know." Kurenai smiled a half smile and watched the man change seats.

"Oh, sorry." Was the soft apology.

"I made some tea. Would you like some?" She asked casually as they both sat down.

"Yes, thank you." Replied the man shortly.

"With or without honey?"

"Empty. I don't put anything in it anymore."

Kurenai handed over the cup and Kakashi thanked with a nod of his head. He took a sip from the warm liquid and his eyes remained secretly observant of his environment. Nothing seemed changed, although everything seemed different. He looked upon the old, familiar things, but with other eyes. There were, of course, changes, alterations, yet so slight, in a way so odd and curious, that they evaded him; not being of the physical order, they reported to his soul, not to his mind. But his soul, being troubled, sought to deny the changes; to admit them meant to admit a change, and this time, change, he feared.

"A year ago I decided to take up on Jujutsu. I went down to the training room a couple of times, I liked it, but now they only take the money off my credit card."

"Do you still smoke?" Kurenai offered as she took the pack of cigarettes from the table.

"No, not anymore. I stopped 10 years ago… How about you?" He looked into her face a moment.

"6 cigarettes a day. Strictly."

"I admire you…" He said with a soft smile that suggested friendliness and exhaled long as he added; "This room hasn't changed a bit."

Kurenai returned his smile. "Now I only use it for writing. I believe you have already heard that I had retired."

"And yet the room hasn't changed."

The woman nodded and Kakashi added, still avoiding professional conversation. "It struck in my heart when I saw Asuma's name still above the doorbell."

"What should I do, Kakashi? Should I plaster it?" Her face remained light but her tone rang with bitterness. There are wounds not even time could heal.

"How have you been handling it all?"

"Well, I have been trying to busy myself, usually with writing. A publisher sought me out. I hope to have my book on the shelves by March."

Kakashi nodded and murmured on a low, deep tone as memories still haunted him too. "He was an admirable man."

Her eyes rested for the fraction of a second on his face. She acknowledged his words with a clearing of her throat. "He was." A short pause then ensued before Kurenai looked again at him with a quiet smile upon her face. Her expression betrayed interest towards the man. But she said nothing anymore, merely questioning with her eyes, which Kakashi understood instantly. The problem was that he couldn't bring himself to open up without help. Not even to her.

"And you? How have you been, Kakashi?" And so she pushed him gently as a friend would have done.

"I work too much, and in the meanwhile, I am desperately trying to maintain the façade of blissful youth. I seriously thought my current state might be about midlife crisis, but aren't I too young for that?"

Kurenai smiled. "And Rin? How is she?"

Kakashi nodded and fidgeted in the chair.

The subject was obviously sensitive. She would return to it later, the therapist thought. "I'm listening…"

"So…" Kakashi cleared his throat. "When I called you yesterday, I felt like I had to talk to someone…I have been feeling this for a while…But yesterday it just...You know, I'd had enough and I was fed up. I have no patience to deal with anything or anyone anymore, not at home not at work with my patients. Like, I want to get over with everything, including the therapies, as fast as I can. And when the patient leaves I hate myself for feeling that way. And then the next patient comes and I try and hold myself back not to send them away. I just want to lock the door of the workplace…"

"I believe you should be a little more concrete about what you mean. Did something specific happen?"

"No…" Was the curt reply.

Silence ensued between them. The woman's thoughts were busy, and for a long time, no speech passed. Kurenai searched his face with her patient, inward-gazing eyes; there have been so much about him that had changed.

 _Kakashi always possessed characteristic personal habits that struck anyone later as extraordinary for a man of his age; for from 15 he led an inner life of exceeding strictness, not to say severity, and was forever practicing mental concentration with a view to obtaining complete control of his feelings, thoughts and, therefore, actions. Upright as a rod of steel himself, he was tolerant to the failings of others, lenient to their weaknesses, and forgiving to those who wronged him. He bore no malice, cherished no ill-feeling. "It's as far as they've got," he used to say, "and no one can be farther than he is." Indeed, his treatment of others implied a degree of indifference to self that had something really big about it. And, even on the lowest grounds, to bear a grudge meant only casting a net that must later catch the feet._

 _His wants in the question of nourishments were firmly regulated too even when as a boy and such habits were still alive ten or twenty years later. He always exercised a really Spartan control over his particular appetites. Not only was his fare most frugal in quantity, but he avoided alcohol completely, and sometimes would fast for a period that made anyone around him wonder for his health. He never spoke of this. People noticed it._

 _Another practice of his was equally singular. In order to increase control of the body and develop tenacity of will he would stand for hours at a time on winter nights, clad only in a nightshirt, fighting sleep, cold, hunger, movement—he would stand like a statue in the center of the room, as though the safety of the world and its people depended upon success._

 _She was one of the very few who had known and loved him for this odd self he possessed and knew that Kakashi's eloignment from socializing was the very fact that he felt-with the soul; shared their joys and sufferings, and understood that they were living things, with a degree of mystery so far behind our comprehension. Communion with the spirit was, for him, communion with the very ground of things. All this, though exquisitely wonderful, was within the grasp of sympathetic comprehension. It was natural._

 _And when he dealt with things less concrete—and his favorites were unconscious forces such as anger and desire, or as he preferred to call them, wind and fire—the experience, though no whit less convincing owing to the manner of his description, was curiously disturbing, because of the results produced upon himself. He rushed, he flamed. It was almost as if, in such cases of the spirit, his actual radiation became enormous, and in the other, some power swept, as in the form of torrential enthusiasm, from his very person._ _She_ _remembered her first impression in the classroom—that a great wind blew, and that flaming colors moved upon the air._

 _He worked incessantly and at university, he was forever thinking of the cruelty of the soul; now he was working at it. It seemed remote from the life of the rest of us, students and others because its aim was different. Pleasure, as such, and the usual forms of indulgence, he left on one side; and women, though his mysterious personality, his physical beauty, and his cold indifference attracted them, he hardly admitted into his personal life at all; to his intimacy, never. His habits were touched with a singular quality of selflessness, very rare, very exquisite,_ _sincere as it was modest, that set him apart in a kind of preferred loneliness, giving to all, yet asking of none._

 _His aims were undeniably lofty, his life both good and pure. Respect grew with closer study of him, for his presence brought an uplifting atmosphere of a more intense life whose center of activity lay so high above the aims of common men as to constitute an "other-worldliness" of a very unusual kind indeed._

 _Kakashi lived in eternal life. The act of saved souls stretched infinitely behind his present existence and infinitely ahead into countless other existences born from those he had saved. The results of what lay behind he must inevitably exhaust. Be that harvest painful or pleasant, he must reap what he had sown. But the future lay entirely in his own hands, and in his power of decision; chance or caprice had no word to say at all. And this consciousness of being in eternal life, master of fate, potentially at least deific—this has remained a part of Kurenai whether she wanted or not._

She observed him now as a doctor, more critically. No dreams or imaginative visions—with one or two remarkable exceptions—came to bewilder judgment. She saw him from outside. If not sufficiently unaffected by his ideas to be quite a normal critic, she was certainly more objective, and often skeptical about his whole demeanor. None the less, the other deeper tendency in her was still strong; it easily wakened into life. This deep contradiction was there now.

The only outward change she noticed, apart from the greater maturity and decision in the features, was a look of sadness he wore, that altered when he spoke of the things he cared about, into an expression of radiant joy. The thought of his great purpose then lit flames in his eyes and brought into the whole countenance a certain touch of grandeur. It was not often, evidently, that he found anyone to talk with; and arguing, as such, he never cared about before. He knew. He was one of those fortunate beings who never had felt doubt. Perfect assurance he had. _**Well, until now…**_

"No?" Kurenai cocked her eyebrow as she queried and upon several moments of hesitation, Kakashi said;

"No…Nothing…Well, all right I tell you an example. I have a couple; the woman is with child but doesn't want to keep it. Her husband is a typical impulsive type."

"What do you mean?"

"A real asshole. During the last session, he kept provoking me until to the point I told them to just get an abortion, ⸺out of rage. I don't know how it could have happened. I lost it. The man of course was gone off the hooks. He called me a murderer. His wrath was projected on me, I know, the source of that emotion was his wife, but, I said and meant literally that they should kill an innocent baby. And this is not the first time I surprise myself with this reaction. This is the worst one but not the first time. Then, I have another patient who confessed to me. Classical emotional transference. She is my patient for over a year and now she tells me she loves me. Kurenai, seriously, if my patients could see into my head…I just simply want to confirm to myself too that everything is all right."

"And I bet that you keep accepting new patients."

Kakashi nodded and resumed. "On Tuesday, there walks into my office the hero of this era, a millionaire, politician; he has really achieved everything by himself and accordingly, he is a real arrogant douche bag. He comes in, tells me that one of his employees exterminated the whole family and then committed suicide. He had gone mad, most probably, because the guy beheaded his own wife and ended the life of his children without hesitation."

"I think I read about it in the news."

"And he tells me all of this without batting an eyelid."

"Of course. Defense mechanism."

"And then there is a young woman whom you know…"A sudden smile broke swiftly over as he recalled her face and name. "Tsunade Senju. She told me that she had been here before me, and how it did not go the way she wanted…But she didn't run away from me, Kure. She felt like she was in the right place in my office. That I could save her."

"Save her?"

Kakashi nodded. "She left her medical evidence on my sofa to tell me she had lymphoma."

"How do you save someone with lymphoma?"

"I don't know…I wanted to talk to her." He said in his soft, low voice, yet his face was shining. The words came from his inmost heart.

"Could you reach her?"

"No."

"She did the same with me."

"I **know** that she will call me back, though. She wouldn't have left her medical evidence there if she didn't want to come back." The way he said it held conviction as of sunrise, and anyhow the denial in self seemed equally to have disappeared. Deep within him, a sense of reality was wakened.

"But why did she tell you this way that she was dying? Why didn't she simply tell you?"

"Because most probably, Kure, she cannot talk about it just yet."

The woman nodded. "That's true. She will be in good hands with you, Kakashi."

The silver crowned therapist smiled with that ancient radiance she had long seen from him.

"Do you know what I felt when I first read that horrible piece of paper? I felt both fear and enthusiasm."

"Enthusiasm?" She asked him, very gently.

"Yes…That there's someone I can help. Someone I can save. My outer self felt shy, but another, deeper self realized a sense of satisfaction that was pleasure. I was aware of a desire to seize her hand and utter something of this bigger, happier sensation. I want to tell her that she can count on me, Kure."

"But you know that you can't cure cancer, Kakashi. We are not doctors, not in that way."

"Don't say that now."

"I am just saying that you tend to do everything for people to help them and if things don't work out, you end up blaming yourself, ignoring the fact that both the circumstances and the environment play part in how things turn out eventually. We are not gods, no matter how pure our intentions are to help those seeking our aid."

He took a moment to think about her words and the radiance softly faded from is countenance. "Kurenai…I **am** a good therapist, but this week was too much for me. I guess I just need someone who tells me that it's all right and there is no problem with me…You know, I wish we had an audience…To hear what we do, how we pull those little details out of these people. I wish that there was someone to congratulate us or applaud us for leading the patients so smoothly back into their unconscious." He went on gently yet eagerly at the same time, his eyes searching her own.

But with truth, her answer came at once: "We are still where we were ten years ago, Kakashi. When I said this, I meant that I wish there was someone who would warn us if there was a danger we were blind to notice."

"It's the same. Like the two sides of the coin. What am I supposed to do? Before a patient walks in panic seizes me veritably."

"This is quite odd…Last night when you called me I thought there was a _**problem**_. Yet you insist on coming here for the sole reason of comfort."

"Problem? Why cannot I simply come to you to uh⸺ converse?" His lips snapped to as though they were of steel and could never open again, while the tone he used made the woman realize that the subject was not one her friend and colleague cared to talk about particularly. _**So there was a problem indeed…**_

"Kakashi…" Kurenai crossed her legs and exhaled slowly as she made a new effort in opening him up; "It has been over ten years we had spoken and now you suddenly show up. The last time we saw each other you were quite mad. You haven't even come to Asuma's funeral. And after all that, you call me late at night and say you need to speak to someone. You never talk when there is nothing you want to say. So what is it you want to say?"

"I said I needed to talk to someone, yes." The signs of uneasiness still were there, but they were negative, far more suggestive, therefore, than if open and direct.

"I remember what you told me the last time. That I only tell you off and halt you in your work."

"I don't remember that…."

"As a supervisor, my job was exactly to criticize and watch you."

"I know, Kure. I know. You supervised me. It is the past. Now, I called you because you are the only I could talk to."

Again the woman was struck by the tone of voice, but this time by something else as well she could not name. Kakashi was excusing himself, explaining yet denying. The manner, too, arrested her. And ten years disappeared as though they had not been, for it was thus Kakashi acted as a boy when there was something unpleasant he had to say and wished to hide it; the tone, the gesture, the manner, they all were there. He was edging up to something he wished to say, yet dared not utter.

"Then talk to me, Kakashi." Kurenai said sympathetically, trying to help.

"We keep arguing with Rin."

"Can you be more specific and tell me how exactly or why?"

"Well…" Answered the other, and then paused, evidently to choose his words with care. "It's always about a silly thing. Last time, it was about the wedding…She said I don't care about it because I am not entirely happy whenever she talks about it or that I am not so enthusiastic. Oblivion knows what she meant."

"And you are not happy then?"

"It's…Never mind…It was just an example. But she told me she is fed up with me only talking and thinking about my job. She was indirectly accusing me of being a workaholic. That I don't recognize her. She hates it that I see everything from the outside, she said things as such."

"What everything?"

"I don't know. Her? The life, our life, you should ask her, really because I have no idea what she meant." Said Kakashi, his voice thick suddenly and his speech confused, though the idea in his mind was certainly clear as daylight.

"I will not ask her because it is **you** who came here."

"Perhaps she **is** right. After all, I'm a psychologist. This is how I function; I analyze things from the outside, to have a better understanding, a clearer perspective within the emotion filled moment. I want to know what _really_ happens."

"And what is happening?"

"Something is broken."

"What? What is broken?"

"I don't know…"

"What would you like? A few occasions when you come and we talk?" She inquired and reached for her notebook and pen.

"Yes…" Kakashi nodded and watched the woman write into the diary.

"All right. Then from now on, these are not friendly chit-chats but supervisions. Or should we label it as therapy?"

"No… my private life is…" His voice had a lifeless, automatic sound as he sought the words to finish the sentence but he could evidently not.

"This hour of this day will do?"

"Yeah…"

"But before we start, will you let me tell you one thing about Rin?"

"Of course." Was the answer.

"Whenever you talk about her I feel like there's an immense sadness in your voice."

"Well, I don't know where she is. She says she goes to the swimming pool but when I open the wardrobe, her swimming dress is there. I call her, she doesn't reply…It's been like this for a while…and…it only bothered me but I never cared. We barely have sex, perhaps once a month."

"Do you desire her?"

"I do, naturally. It all just seems exhausting…"

"If a therapist cannot handle when a patient falls in love with them it means that most probably there is something wrong in their private lives." Her smooth accusation reached him, calm and normal as though she talked about the weather.

"What do you mean?" The wording startled him; but this surprise, not unmingled with denial, gave place immediately to emotions of a deeper and much more complex order. "I can handle it. Our relationship sucks but Mei has nothing to do with it."

"Mei?"

"I just mentioned her to you."

"No. You didn't say her name." She answered patiently, her statement with reason.

"What do you want to hear? She just came to me and said she loved me and wanted to make love."

"And this deeply affected you."

"Oh, come on Kurenai, this is bullshit. It's better if you stop now." Kakashi objected, being in one of his denying moods.

"With what?"

"Trying to find a connection between them. Our problems with Rin have long started. You are well aware that every second patient falls in love with their therapist at certain stages of their therapy. And you are also aware that it is the best that can happen if they feel comfortable enough to admit it. The room is supposed to be a safe zone for them to open up."

"You come here and talk about Mei. Or rather, it seems like you don't want to talk about her. Or that you cannot bring yourself to talk about her."

"Not to hurt you, Kurenai, but I have no idea what I'm doing here."

"And why is that?"

"Because just like you did 10 years ago, you make up something in your mind and you bring me to book for it."

"Did something happen between you two?

"Of course not." Kakashi answered, offended.

"But just now, you were hesitant." Kurenai observed, tactically.

Kakashi cried out, caught by a wave of inexplicable anger that she would mention another person too. He said the first thing that came into his head. "Because the mere assumption is outrageous!"

"When did it happen?"

The question nonplussed him all the more.

"What happened when? I said nothing fu⸺"

"When did she confess her love to you?"

"The day after Rin told me she's screwing with someone else."

"What?"

It was strange, this sense of shrinking that particular picture brought. Never, except in sleep occasionally, had it returned to him, and probably it was dread that kept it out of sight. And just then, Kakashi touched the topic that caused his heart to sink. "Lately I just don't know what's going on with people. I feel like everyone has gone crazy. What's happening, around me Kurenai? And she told me she did it because I don't pay enough attention to her."

"And do you?"

"Kurenai." Kakashi sighed. "Are you starting it too? Yes, I do. You have known me forever, and you do know how I am with women in general. I showed no difference a face to her when we had met. And yet Rin said it all depends on me. _**What**_ depends on me? I sit in my office all day. It's a nightmare by the way. And then she tells me on our date night how she is about to fuck with that other guy."

"I never thought she'd be like that."

"That's the worst in it. She always mixed corporality with emotionality. She always needed candle light and romance. And now…she calls me an impotent fumbler."

"What are your feelings now, Kakashi?" She looked hard into his eyes yet her voice ever measured and soft.

"I don't want to see her." He said gravely and crossed his arms as he said it.

"Kakashi... She said that it depends on you."

"If it depended on me I'd throw her out of the window. She shows me her discontent in the most primitive way, Kurenai. We could have gone to couple therapy but no, she needs some Christian Grey asshole to make her say _"Hey, Kakashi, you are not enough a man to me anymore."_ But then why bother saying yes to me in the first place?"

"You proposed her?" Kurenai raised an eyebrow. It simply sounded out of character. Evidently, the man was being out of himself just to show affection.

"Of course I did. I thought it would save us."

"This was your way of trying to save your relationship instead of talking to her."

"You don't understand, Kurenai. This is much more complicated than that."

"You came to clear things up, didn't you? You only have one patient that doesn't make you feel horrible about yourself, and another who is a possibility to prove your manliness. And Rin decides to put more weight on your shoulders when she demands you to decide if you need her or not. And two days after this, you show up at my doorstep." She remarked casually, the tone and manner betraying ill-concealed disapproval. The change of key, both in its character and its abruptness, seemed intentional, almost challenging. She knew what she was doing, and knew also, that Kakashi was agitated to notice.

"What are you doing now? Making up a little fan fiction in your head?" said the man sarcastically.

"I am just trying to understand what's behind your words."

"I'm just exhausted. Exhausted with everything."

"You first tell me you want to get away from your patients. Then you tell me that your relationship is in ruins. That you are unhappy."

"I didn't say I am unhappy; you just made that up. I handled worse things in life than women."

"And then, there is a woman confessing her desire of sleeping with you… Why did you come here in fact?"

She was gazing at him out of those strange eyes that saw into so huge a universe, he answered softly: "I don't know, honestly."

"Then I shall tell you. You are expecting absolution. Because what you feel is remorse."

"Why would I have remorse?" He asked, feeling overwhelmed. Never once did it occur that Kakashi lost focus over his life, that it felt that it controlled him instead of him being in charge of the Past, Present, and his Future. Therefore, having listening half-truths, various accusations of possible mistakes led him on the path where we all encounter ourselves a few times; the path of emotionality.

"I just don't know whether you feel this about two patients or just one in particular."

"A freaking sloppy fan fiction I would never read." Kakashi huff- and puffed in his chair, feeling highly uncomfortable.

"What makes you so upset?"

He glanced sharply at her beneath his long dark eyelids. He hesitated a moment. "You." He then added presently in a low voice, "It's on your face how much you are enjoying this. The patient falls in love with the therapist, first-year lesson at the university. It's called erotic impulse transference. I **can** handle this, trust me."

"And are you sure it is a part of your therapy and not more?"

"What do you mean?"

"Aren't you scared that the same happens to you that happened to your father?" Kurenai kept her eyes upon his face, as though waiting for an answer.

"I am not my father! You seriously think that I want to leave home and I need your blessing to do it?"

"I just said why this Mei's confession is so important to you now."

"This is madness." Kakashi shook his head, his flawless face wrinkled with anger, his patience running low.

"And Rin?"

"What's with her?"

"You are afraid that she will leave you for that other man."

"Of course I am."

"You had a long week. Two women forced you to make a decision, soon."

"What do you mean this time?"

"Mei and Rin."

"Now I feel like three." He rose abruptly, vexed and dismayed, nearly upsetting the chair behind him in his clumsiness.

"Kakashi…" Kurenai sighed, knowing him well yet unfamiliar with this new, sad side of him.

"I shouldn't have come here." He stated rather sorrowfully than with dryness in his voice.

"But you did. And I didn't understand why, after 10 years you'd pretend that it was only yesterday that you walked out that door. But I agreed to see you."

"You are happy aren't you? Thinking; _"That's it, he couldn't make it after all."_ Your smile said everything, you know." He answered, putting on his long black coat in the antechamber.

She was standing at the doorstep as she answered calmly, "If that's how you truly feel then it is better if we don't force this meeting."

"I think too." He nodded purely out of rage and opened the entrance door.

"Kakashi." Her voice stopped him to betake just yet. He did not mind it."Are you this mad at me?"

"No. I just don't understand myself. Why I came here…" Came the huffy reply.

"Talk to Rin, Kakashi."

"Sure. Good night." Was what he said before the door closed behind his figure.


	4. Chapter 4

**Tuesday 10.00 am- Madara**

It was a warm and muggy morning, the dawn passing rapidly into heated brightness now; one of those late spring days when summer heat flits forward, with light yet weak but its strength an ominous prediction. The covered sky increased the clammy warmth, which was damp, unhealthy, devitalizing. No wind stirred. Konoha was sticky and depressing. Yet people approved the heat, although it tired them.

The town was hurried and confused.

Kakashi was standing at the little bar in one extremity of the room, a counter full of various teas, herbs and spices, and several blends and grains of coffee bags arranged in perfect order. The water was boiling when its sound was interrupted by the opening of the old oak door, moving ever so gently in hits hinged as it shut behind the man.

"Good morning." Madara came in with a light bow, and the men exchanged greetings.

"Good morning." Kakashi repeated while he was pouring the hot water into his cup, soaking the small teabag inside it. "Would you like some coffee or tea?" He proposed in an amical manner, delighted at heart to see the man of power return.

"One coffee would be nice, thanks." Was the stone cold answer while Madara joined him at the corner of the room, his sharp dark eyes canvassing the various possibilities of spoiling one's tastebuds.

"What kind do you want?"

"What do you have?" Madara cocked an eyebrow, unused to not being served without inquiry. He was used to getting what he wanted without having to specify what was he wanted exactly, taking, claiming and possessing by his own ways, having his whiskey neat and coffee black simply by the intimidating look he gave to the waiters.

"I have coffee I can grind freshly or just have some instant one."

The idea of the pre-grinded made him frown. "Real coffee, of course. And make it black." He said on a half commanding tone and seated himself upon the large, comfortable sofa, placing a pillow away from his side. He crossed his legs and stretched his arms on the top of the seat, looking around observantly.

Kakashi put some more water to boil and poured a handful of beans into the machine. There came a short pause as the beans were swiftly grinded and the strong, bitter flavor filled the room with its strong, lively scent.

"I assumed that you would be a coffee drinker." Madara began, smirking to himself. His voice was teasing, curious. "To survive your daily nine or ten hours of patients or so. All those idiots. I feel sorry for you."

Kakashi stepped to him and placed the freshly prepared drink at the small table. He seated himself in his own chair, his cup of tea almost empty already. "I do not drink coffee. Just tea." Was the calm answer.

"Do you perhaps have high blood pressure or some heart disease?"

"No." He began politely. "I simply never quite liked how it tastes."

Madara was confused. "Is this some unconscious action to avoid dysrhythmia?"

Kakashi smiled and shook his head gently.

"Well, do you go to regular checkups?"

"Well, I do, once a year as it is expected."

"And how is your heart doctor?"

Yearning.

The sudden word in his mind struck him alert. He gulped. He resumed the conversation with a smile. "So far so good. By the way, I was relieved that you called. I was a little worried for you, after our last session."

Madara spat his coffee out upon taking a first sip and placed the cup back angrily, highly dissatisfied onto the table, the small porcelain clinking furiously against the hard wooden furniture.

"This what you always do if your coffee isn't perfect?"

"This coffee was an attempt of murder towards me." Madara scoffed, unamused by the doctor's lack of expertise and familiarity with coffee. He folded his arm defensively, his voice teasing again. "Well, let's hear the explanation about it."

"I used to have a patient who every time he stepped in he would lament about a horrible headache and amidst excuses he would always ask for a painkiller."

"Which in my case means what?"

"Surely, this patient was trying to communicate that something was tormenting him. That he felt trapped, in trouble."

Madara cocked an eyebrow, waiting for the man to resume.

"And you, right now, are trying to tell me that you are rebelling against the ways of psychotherapy. You will come, of course but each time something displeases you, you will spit it back out."

The politician rolled his eyes at the accusation. "Isn't this a little forced Doctor?"

Kakashi nodded and finished up his tea. "Perhaps. What do you believe of it? Is it? You came, after all."

"I never once said that I came here for therapy." He gave him a hard look before he resumed, scolding audible in the voice. "I figured I owe you to tell you what happened during the funeral."

Kakashi shifted in his chair at the sound of his words.

"You helped me to make this decision, after all." Was the replacement of responsibility disguised in a comment.

Kakashi repeated softly in his deep resonant voice "So it means that you went."

"It was this Saturday in the town's main cemetery. Other cemeteries couldn't have held 7 coffins in the feretory. The sun was shining; the air was warm with a gentle drizzle of rain. Like in the movies. It was an atheist ceremony." Madara scoffed, half chuckling to himself upon the recollection of memories. "Oddly enough, I sort of pitied them for not believing in anyone or anything, actually. As if it would have mattered anything at all, once you are put into the ground. Mute led the ceremony. They are really called like this."

The silver-crowned man nodded. "I know."

"I didn't. At any rate, once he was done, he looked around and asked if there was anyone wishing to speak a few words about the deceased. This is when it was supposed to be my chance to give some mighty speech. Beforehand, some uncle or who spoke. It was disturbingly cliché. You know, when I went to the ceremony, I was curious, I figured I would check how it feels for someone like you."

There came soft wrinkles over the other's forehead and he asked patiently. "For me?"

"I realized why I want to talk to these people. I have a mission here."

"Did you succeed? Could you comfort them? You know, I want more than that. Than comfort. I want to help people."

Madara chuckled and resumed. "Yeah, that is exactly what I realized as I was listening to that boring speech. Trying to conquer Paradise during the burial of corpses. And in that fucking retarded speech, when he says: "an always pulsing bleeding shard"

Here he paused and scoffed as if the words sounded somewhat audacious, in their own sincerity and pain. He resumed, irritated at the flood of memories. "Oh please, can you be more dramatic? So, at the end, I said nothing. I realized that their true issue can't be solved anyway. Also, at the end of the day, I felt nothing, really. Do you understand? It was a complete failure. I went there as I had made up my mind, I stood there and I felt nothing. Can you imagine it?"

The other nodded. "Yes. I can."

"I'm trying to get to know my employees, I try and remember all their damned names, all the 400 or so, and I am standing at one of their funeral's and I felt nothing. It felt like during one of those yearly Christmas gatherings. When I speak one of my speeches in front of all those people. I felt the same emptiness."

"How did it go? How did all go? The ceremony, I mean."

Madara locked his fingers together in his lap as he thought and resumed in talking. "There were about 50 people. It wasn't that screaming kind of funeral, where people are clinging to the coffins and there are reporters and the media all over the place. It was peaceful, quiet, and rather well-mannered. There News wasn't even there. The tragedy happened too long ago. Also, nobody cared about me. I was listening to all that bullshit and I was thinking why the hell I was there."

Kakashi nodded and ran his fingers through his hair as he thought. And upon a moment later, always soft and patient, he asked; "Find a specific part during the funeral that you consider meaningful somehow. Describe that moment to me please, where you felt you were supposed to feel something but you did not."

The dark-crowned man pondered a second and answered; "Since I couldn't leave just like that without being unnoticed so I figured I'd leave when they are placing coffins down into the ground. A man caught me by my arm and asked if I could help him, his limbs were hurting and he wanted to walk to them to drop a rose. Like in some stupid movie during a wedding. He asked me whose side I came from. Which family did I belong to. I said I was the colleague of the man. And then he said he was his father. I was like: Awesome. And then he started venting to me about how he is hated now by the family of his son's murdered wife, how everyone looks at him as if he had raised his child to become a murderer, and I was thinking: What if he knows exactly who I am? And he is pretending all this?"

"That sounds very bizarre, don't you think?"

The man nodded. "Exactly. It is. At the end, we ended up talking as if we had been best friends with his son. You see, we spoke a few times."

There was an air of decent discomfort mingling with curious truths and unuttered torments about them. There was furtive pain and sorrow and bitter anger as well. Kakashi felt slightly at unease. He caught himself biting on his lower lip.

"So you did know the man."

"What?"

Confusion plastered across the other's face.

Kakashi's inquiry remained gentle, asking after a brief pause. "You spoke a few times. That is what you said just now."

Madara rolled his eyes. "It wasn't real conversation… There are dismissals everywhere, okay?"

The silver-crowned doctor watched his patient narrowly, as he stumbled among the details of what the politician evidently found a difficult, almost an impossible confession.

"But the man did try and talk to you about it, right?" He pressed on.

"Yes…" Madara cleared his throat. "I couldn't have time for him. I didn't see him. I am a politician, A busy man. I wouldn't have known what to say anyway. He wouldn't have understood the problem. Then, on the weekend, we were supposed to go to see some car racing with my wife. I opened the garage doors and guess what, that godforsaken man was standing right there. In the evening, when we got home, he was still standing there. I parked the Maserati, walked to him and slapped him in the face. I told him to get off my grass or I call the police."

There came a cold, unwelcoming silence between the two. The dark-haired man shifted in the seat, feeling great nervousness batter at his soul. He hated it. "What would you have done in my place?"

"What did you do?" Asked Kakashi, avoiding a dozen more obvious and natural questions.

"This. This is what I did. And now, I am standing in the cemetery, during the ceremony and I felt nothing. No remorse. No pain. Not even pity. I kept thinking how crappy the music was, how hot was outside and how the clothing of some woman looked like shit."

The doctor nodded after a brief pause of contemplation, always meticulous in choosing his words. "I had that feeling too. In a specific situation where sadness or pity was expected and the feelings weren't there. Does it mean I didn't love the person anymore? I would ponder long about it before realizing, that these feelings are there too, my remorse proves that I have those feelings."

"So what are you trying to say? I felt something just didn't feel that I felt it?"

"Yes."

Madara laughed, irked. "That's utter chicken shit. You either feel something or you don't."

Kakashi raised his scarred eyebrow in curiosity. "Is it?"

"Look…" Madara sighed, the condescension in his voice unmistakable. "I'm paying a lot to come here, and sit here for an hour so I expect you to exert yourself a little. You are supposed to be smarter than me."

Kakashi scoffed softly and smiled. "So this is about competition, isn't it? Who is smarter, better, we are yet again competing. Even the coffee is about that. Who is the best? Who is more flawless? Who knows it all better?" With his smile on his thin, perfectly molded lips, he added; "I don't envy you."

"Just leave it."

The calm, searching eyes held a touch of bewilderment in them, the eyes of an honest, intelligent man stepping on a ground ever so unstable, ever so fragile. But this was his job to do; he wanted to help. "I'm trying to understand what's holding you back from feeling those emotions that should be there. For some reason I feel like sympathy is a terrifying emotion for you."

"If I was a sensitive asshole, my career would be nowhere." He retorted, looking sharply at the silver-crowned man.

"Are you absolutely certain that you felt nothing?"

"As soon as I felt like I did, I fled. I called my father for advice. To feel better."

He repeated the words in his mind, fixing the man with his steady gaze. He had noticed something in the reply. He had to pick up on the trail. "What was in that man that reminded you of your father?"

Madara grew confused again. "You don't know my father. There is absolutely nothing similar between those two." The mere idea was atrocious.

Kakashi moved in his chair. "What made you want to call your father? Why was he the first person coming to your mind?"

"Let me tell you something." Madara began and he leaned closer to the other, his elbows resting on his knees as he gave the doctor a half dangerous, half pitiable look. "If in this world there is someone who doesn't know what remorse is, that is my father. He killed his own, you see. With his own two hands. _Remorse is a luxury, son_ , he would say that to me as a child. _We cannot afford it. Let others feel it instead of us."_

There hung great some grave disturbance in the silence that ensued. Truth was a bitter, cruel thing. The word "remorse" struck him. It touched something in the doctor. He leaned against the chair, and the image of that lovely woman and the effect of that first encounter was here again confirmed. Kakashi began to think. Vitality was increased; heart and mind caught up an extra gear; thought leaped, if extravagantly, towards speculation; emotion deepened, if ecstatically, towards belief. All the normal reactions of the system were speeded up and strengthened. Consciousness was intensified.

 _The man in front of him was talking about remorse; there's been confession. And suddenly, there is her. She opened in his being, in the sight, hearing, in a mild degree of divination. Remorse invoked the woman, he pondered. There had been striking pain at the acknowledgment of her truth, of the unvoiced confession struggling to come out. He felt helpless for he could not be God._

 _He felt thus, remorse. But also, there came remorse for the sinful yearning that haunted him now night and day, came creeping into his consciousness, grabbing at his logical brain and plaguing it with some odd curiosity towards a life unknown. Towards possibilities never once dared to be even imagined. Indications as yet were slight, he realized, but they were real._

 _Yes, he could explain it all, more or less, he could trace all to something or other in his being, yet—he knew that the real explanation ... well—his cleverest intellectual explanation and analysis were worthless after all. For here lay something utterly beyond his knowledge and experience... He wanted to see her again…But now…_

Kakashi cleared his throat and his demure, calculated and clear mind resumed its general course. He smiled, speaking slowly. "You know, perhaps your father is trying to say that remorse is a dangerous thing. It can cost lives. As it is the sign of weakness. And those who are weak, they die. You grew up with this message, this is what you got. But I am sure you know it's wrong. You went to the funeral, after all. You felt something there, deep inside. Perhaps it was inexplicable, or inexplicably infuriating that you did feel something. Because you must not feel it. This can be a horrible weight for you to bear."

Madara leaned back against the sofa, folding his arms, his face bitter and mournful. There was an air of sincerity about him. "Happy is the man who is not accused by the parent. My wife… She loves my father. Perhaps that's why we stayed together for so long. The admiration in her. Oh yes, I came because of her, by the way."

Kakashi nodded in silent acknowledgment of the other's words, and kept his eyes on the man. He saw that Madara's face, albeit lit anew by the subject brought up that was her wife, still held a puzzled look. He detected this new expression of sincerity, of fragility and he was pleased to see it. This was progress. After a momen't pause, he asked; "You came because of her?"

Madara nodded, his behavior shifting back into defensive coldness and condescension. "Yeah, well, let me tell you the story. On the day of the funeral, we were together in the living room. I looked at her, as we were in front of the television. She fell asleep. I just couldn't take my eyes off her. For a whole hour I just watched her. Have you ever done something like this? Watching your sleeping wife?"

Kakashi felt a sudden wave of discomfort seize him. The image of Rin came to his mind and the endless battle of marriage brought an unmistakable taste of venom into his mouth. He suppressed it swiftly, his true thoughts unreadable on his face. "I always fall asleep sooner than…her."

"Huh." Madara scoffed at the information but was not at all concerned by it. "Try it once. You might get surprised."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I was looking at her and asked myself: Who the hell is this woman? What the hell am I doing here? Why am I living with this woman for a decade? And then, you know what happened? She started gritting her teeth. It was the first time I saw her doing that. I got so upset." There was disdain in his voice. There was rage.

"How much did it bother you?" He asked the obvious, but not for himself, for the other.

"It did, too much. You know, I realized, that she has been faking this look of a perfect woman, perfect wife for hell knows what time now, and she can only let all of this fakeness out in her sleep."

"This is not an uncommon thing, Madara."

The man was displeased. He resumed, his words thick of accusation. "The whole woman is a big bunch of repression. She is gritting her teeth because of that in her sleep."

"So you are saying she has her own problems too?"

Madara narrowed his eyes as he added, feeling like a culprit at court whose words are being twisted inside out. She is like an atomic clock. She is way worse than me. A rigid bitch. We live in this meticulous world she had created. There is exact time for dinner, for games, for fucking, even. She dictates the position, the strength, the time. Unbelievable."

Kakashi exhaled the air slowly, remaining patient in his voice. "You seem very upset with her. Did you talk to her about it?"

"I did. And you know what she said? Oh, I know I grit my teeth. You only noticed it now? You watched me for an hour as I slept? Hmmm..It sounds like a love confession. Its lovely." His voice was mocking.

"And this upset you?"

"She told me I should not have more coffee, because the doctors warned me too."

"You are upset that your wife is worried about you. You feel like she is belittling you?"

"Oh, of course not. She is all worked up for me not being able to return to work."

"How long have you been away from the firm?"

"Two months, I think."

"It can't be easy to lose that world. Being forced to be left out of it all."

Madara rolled his eyes, answering; "I cannot really be left out of anything, Doctor, I own the firm. I almost own the whole town, for hell's sake."

Kakashi nodded. "But you are not there anymore. It did make you ponder what would happen if you could not, did it? If you were not a sterling man anymore. Do you even want to go back?"

He nodded in the affirmative. "Of course. My wife wants me back in there too. It's driving me crazy. She should let me live." He answered, recklessness increasing in him. He rose and walked to the bar for a moment, listened attentively to the birds' singing outside, then grabbed the kettle and picked a cup and poured some coffee for himself. He felt trapped in his own mind. He felt trapped in the world. The singular action of pouring coffee meant control. He needed it.

Kakashi waited patiently for the man to return to the sofa. He watched his every motion, pondered, thought and made the sincerest deductions a scientist mind can make. Thee had to be saving, there had to be help offered. "Madara. Your wife did not change overnight. It's more likely that it is you looking at her with a different approach. Because of what you have been through."

Buffeted and pushed by the words that seemed like mocking accusations, they sat and faced each other, hands on laps, eyes looking into eyes, two strangers, doctor and patient a man and a king, a great void between them. They disliked one another. Once again the scent of the coffee danced with light above the piled-up books, papers and boxes.

"I don't really know what you are trying to say here, Doc."

"Your wife is fighting for you to be able and return to work. But I think you don't want to."

Suffocating, dangerous silence ensued as when one is anticipating the crashing of a storm. The verdict then passed rapidly.

"I think I should move out of home. No reason is prolonging things. Once you realize you don't love the other anymore…No reason to stay together. To suffer for years in unlove…Its better if I end this now."

There was a momentary confusion about the silver-crowned man as he proceeded to ask; "Don't you think this is a too radical decision right now?"

The politician's words were a personal message to him; he took it that way. Lack of love…The end of things…

"Don't sweat it." He laughed. "Do you know what I realized? I never actually loved her. What a terrible realization. What am I supposed to do? Should I have a lover? Or divorce and find someone else like my father? You seem at unease." There was a bitter content on the man's face.

"A little. You are a radical man." Alarm rose in the other. He winced.

"Don't bother. I feel relieved."

"If you leave everything behind, you will feel relieved. That is true. But it doesn't mean it is the right thing. The question is, who are you leaving behind exactly? Your wife, who is reflecting the battle inside your own soul by the way she is fighting to get you back to work? Perhaps it is not her you are trying to leave, but yourself." The hint of warning guidance was audible in his voice, as well as visible in his eyes and manner.

The air was electric, sharp, sparkling, and the life inside the man's eyes began to pulse anew with its restless and impetuous anxiety. Surely, things were never this easy. Fleeing brought more pain and worse outcomes. Solution had to lie elsewhere.

"No reason to stay with her anymore." Was the other's impassive answer.

For a second there came silence. Kakashi swallowed his unease. It was choking him.

"Did you talk to her about this?"

"No." Madara shot his piercing eyes into the man's soul. He wanted payback. He shifted the responsibility on him, again. Remorse was a luxury he could not afford. Other's had to bear the consequence. "I wanted to talk to you first."

There was fear in his voice that came with the accusation, and his body stiffened oddly as he retorted; "I am not certain you really care about my opinion. That I am but a seal to the already made contract in your mind."

The rejoinder however, displeased the Uchiha, making him feel even more uneasy, and Kakashi did notice the tone of his remark too as he was smiling his pleasure and content as he added;

"Oh no, I have only been considering things but today you helped me make up my mind." He stood up and threw the money onto the table. He needed to make him feel a pawn. A piece of his own cruel game. He could have no control over him. Madara walked to the door and opened it. He said as he glanced back at the man sitting stupefied. "Well, what can I say now, today my money invested in you was worth it. I got what I came for."

Kakashi's eyes widened, and he called after him; "Madara!"


End file.
